Posts tagged as The Economy
Will We Learn The Lessons Of The Current Crash?
I would like to think that if we make it through the persistent financial troubles of our age and eventually return to some semblance of economic prosperity, the inevitable crash that follows on a few years after will be met with the knowledge that austerity is not a solution to recession, because we have run that experiment this time around it is impossible to argue otherwise, but I know that it's not gonna be the case. Because we're not gonna make it through the persistent financial troubles of our age. It's all downhill from here, folks! Watch out for those fires.
Today's Groupon: Helping People with HIV for Half Off
Today's New York City Groupon offering is a 50% discount at Housing Works' nonprofit thrift stores, which raise money to assist people living with HIV. For $20, you can receive $40 worth of things! Oh, just FYI: "A pair of designer shoes that sells for $40 in one of our stores provides ten days worth of hot meals for a homeless HIV+ mother and her child." Enjoy your discount. :(
The Financial Crisis: Are You Angry Or Apathetic?
"During the decade-long real estate bubble preceding the global financial crisis, a bubble that itself strikingly resembled Mr. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, the world’s largest financial institutions earned several hundred billion dollars in fake profits. Some of them made billions by using derivatives to bet against the very investments they sold to their customers as safe. A large percentage of these profits were then personally appropriated by the top 1 per cent in the financial sector. Yet despite substantial evidence of large-scale fraud, nobody has gone to jail, nobody’s compensation has been clawed back, and only a few firms have paid even trivial fines." READ MORE
Person Extremely Irritated by Free Internet Service's Downtime
Today a person was totally annoyed by some minor downtime on a free Internet service, and immediately took to another free Internet service to complain about it. "Ugh, OMG, I'm so annoyed, this stupid thing suuuucks!!!!" the person typed to all their online friends and acquaintances. READ MORE
The Global Casino
A long time ago I was involved in an attempt to finance the buyout of a card club in LA. It was quite a profitable business, doing about $100 million a year in revenues, on which it cleared close to $30 million after cash expenses. They made their money by charging people to sit at a table and play poker, taking a little piece of each hand. That way they could get away with not being a gambling establishment, which would have been illegal in Los Angeles, because they weren't actually a participant in the game; they were just a venue where people happened to sit down and play a game of skill against one another for money. The people who pitted their wits against one another won or lost, and the owners of the club took their cut and lived the high life. READ MORE
Fewer People Dying At, Going To, Work
The bright side of unemployment: "According to new data unveiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics last week, there were 4,430 workplace fatalities last year compared with 5,214 in 2008. While firms in America's most dangerous industries would love to toast a triumph of workplace safety in the 21st century, there's no escaping the fact that fewer jobs, in general, existed last year."
In Fear Of Fear
As jobless claims continue to spiral, and desperate Americans start ransacking their retirement accounts for sustenance, the US economy looks like it's developed much the same allergy to productive labor that's long afflicted the Kardashian clan. And now comes Washington Post business writer Neil Irwin to observe that employers aren't adding jobs-even with corporate profits increasing-for a simple reason: They aren't convinced that a broader recovery is going to take. As Irwin explains, it comes down largely to sluggish demand: CEOs believe "U.S. consumers are destined to disappoint for many years. As a result, they say, the economy is unlikely to see the kind of almost unbroken prosperity of the quarter-century that preceded the financial crisis." READ MORE
The Economy: Why It Sucks
The economy is terrible right now. Almost everybody seems to agree. The business community, as represented by the US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and most Republicans, has some ideas as to how to fix it: cut taxes; reduce the deficit (!); rein in Big Government spending (except defense); stop over-regulating business so they can get on with business. The Democrats have their own idea: more stimulus, in the form of, for example, extending unemployment benefits. Who's right? If anybody? READ MORE
Consensus: U.S. Economy "Losing Steam"!
I was correct! The Times Economix blog, the AP, Reuters, CNBC and the Telegraph have all agreed in the last hour the that U.S. economy is losing steam! Noooo! Our steam! Without the steam, we are lost! I don't have any steam left to give either. What about our giant steam engines? That once made all our precious steam? Sad day.... for steam and its enthusiasts. (No but seriously we're maybe as screwed as I've always said we would be, which is weird and unlikely!)
MTV Opening On-Screen Employment Agency For People Who Aren't On "The Real World"
Next week, MTV will debut the new reality show MTV Hired, which is sort of like Made with résumé counseling; young people will be given the chance to go for the job of their dreams, and taught dos and don'ts of job-hunting involving things like folding your résumé so it fits in your jacket pocket (don't!) and knowing the nuts and bolts of the companies being applied to (do!). The candidates get interviewed and talked about behind their backs and eventually one person "wins" the job, while the others are forced back into the world of checking Craigslist and watching MTV all day. Since the term "dream job" is liberally applied in the press release, and the target audience is one that overlaps with that of Teen Cribs and the like, it shouldn't surprise you that many of the companies where openings are being sought do things like design shoes, plan events, and write blogs that "help busy women shop online." For some reason, the general frothiness of the pastimes involved made me think of a quote that I read from a Harvard Business Review piece: READ MORE
